About “The Story of O.J.”

The song title refers to O.J. Simpson, the former NFL running back who was accused and acquitted of killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. The trial was named the “Trial of the Century” due to the massive amount of public attention and scandal related to the celebrity of the accused as well as the strained relationship between the black community of Los Angeles and the LAPD. The title is also a play on The Story of O, a famous French novel written in 1954 about dominance and submission.

The song features a sample of the song “Four Women” by Nina Simone, which tells the story of four black women with different skin tones and the struggles they faced. The allusion to Simone’s four women in the chorus suggests that regardless of whether one is wealthy or poor, light skinned or dark, one’s blackness is a more relevant marker in a racist society. No I.D. juxtaposes three separate elements of Nina Simone’s “Four Women” to create the haunting beat, lifting the repeating piano riff from the track’s opening, as well as taking vocals from the start of the first and second verses, respectively. The sample provides more than just a sonic base for the track: it helps establish the themes that run throughout, placing Jay’s racially-charged observations as another entry in the long history of damaging African-American stereotypes.

What have the artists said about the song?

‘The Story of OJ’ is really a song about we as a culture, having a plan, how we’re gonna push this forward. We all make money, and then we all lose money, as artists especially. But how, when you have some type of success, to transform that into something bigger.

This is where switching up the process helped me. Maybe before I go, ‘We can’t use two Nina Simones! We can’t use Steve Wonder!’ But that’s what he wanted. I left it up to him to do the rest of the business. It freed me up to just be creative and be told, ‘this is what I want.’ It’s challenging as well.

Is there a music video?

Where can I watch the Footnotes special?

Footnotes for “The Story of O.J.” is currently viewable exclusively on TIDAL:

What has producer No I.D. said about the track?

‘O.J.’ came from us just sitting around and having a conversation. The unique thing about working with Jay is if something didn’t happen, he’s not going to say it. He’s true to himself [and tells real stories]. He doesn’t box himself in. [To make the songs] we had to talk it out. He’s so smart that [he stores] all the conversations and writes verses in his head. It just takes, like, ‘Bring Emory around, let’s talk about the old days’ or ‘Oh, Guru, tell him…’ and then songs just start happening.

So at the end of the day we were just talking. He had given me the ‘Four Women’ sample. I was doing this chopping technique with the samples and he was like ‘You should do it with these.’ So I told him to just make a playlist … Then I could make the samples say what I wanted them to say.

Why is JAY-Z listed as a co-producer on the track?

Some of the tracks that say they were co-produced by Jay-Z, those are the ones where he gave me the idea of the song to sample, like Nina Simone’s ‘Four Women’ on ‘The Story of O.J.’